animate vs keyframes for animation

paphus

I use Daz3D mostly for animation. Currently I use only keyframes, and not animate. Mainly using stock poses and letting the timeline transition the figure between poses and tweeking them as required to make them look natural and make sure arms and legs don't pass through eachother.

I have tried using animate (lite that comes with Daz3D), and like the idea of being able to buy stock animations, but the blocks seem to be black boxes, and don't integrate with keyframes set from the timeline.

If I start with a preset pose, it just switches in one frame to the start pose of the aniblock, it does not transition like in timeline, it is difficlut to even put aniblocks together.

Is there are way to make it transition?

Do I need to buy the animate2 for this?

Is there a better way to do animation?

Also, in the Daz store there are only 150 animations you can buy, but 3000 poses. Is there anywhere to find more preset animations, either aniblocks, or pose set presets (and why don't they sell pose set presets in the Daz store (only static poses))?

 

 

Sven Dullah

The animation data in an aniblock (translations, rotations) override the timeline so if you want to edit an aniblock you probably have to get animate2, I have only used the lite version myself so not sure. But you can use the timeline to add posecontrols to the aniblock, like expressions, torso bend torso twist arms up and so on. ( Posecontrols are found in the parameters pane, select a body part like the head and in posecontrol you should find expressions, eye movements, neck rotations etc). You can also record the aniblock to the timeline and then remove the aniblock and continue to work with keyframes in the timeline.

I do all my animations in the timeline, have pretty much given up on using aniblocks, in theory they should work seamlessly together but my experience is that they never do. Maybe animate 2 works better, atleast you get a bunch of options with it, like adding subtracks and I think graphic editing of keyframes. I can't advice you on getting animate2, everyone's workflow is different, but I know keyframe animation pretty well and can get the results I want in the timeline. However I use the keymate/graphmate plugins to edit and copy/paste keyframes and strongly recommend getting them if you want to do animations in DS. With graphmate you can finetune keyframes pretty accurately and with keymate it's very easy to move copy and delete keyframes or groups of keyframes to get timing right while the animation is running.

I'm sure you can find tutorials about animate2, keymate and graphmate via google, and there are a large number of threads here about animating in DS, as I said google is your friend;)

 

RA

Sven Dullah said:

timeline. However I use the keymate/graphmate plugins to edit and copy/paste keyframes and strongly recommend getting them if you want to do animations in DS. With graphmate you can finetune keyframes pretty accurately and with keymate it's very easy to move copy and delete keyframes or groups of keyframes to get timing right while the animation is running.

I'm sure you can find tutorials about animate2, keymate and graphmate via google, and there are a large number of threads here about animating in DS, as I said google is your friend;)

 

Thanks fo your response. I was wondering why everyone suggested using keymate.

Sven Dullah

RA said:

Sven Dullah said:

timeline. However I use the keymate/graphmate plugins to edit and copy/paste keyframes and strongly recommend getting them if you want to do animations in DS. With graphmate you can finetune keyframes pretty accurately and with keymate it's very easy to move copy and delete keyframes or groups of keyframes to get timing right while the animation is running.

I'm sure you can find tutorials about animate2, keymate and graphmate via google, and there are a large number of threads here about animating in DS, as I said google is your friend;)

 

Thanks fo your response. I was wondering why everyone suggested using keymate.

Yup the keymate and graphmate plugins are old but very useful IMO, will save you a lot of time. The interfaces are a bit wonky but, once you get used to how things work, quite straight forward;)